Page numbers refer to print edition
5 As I take my spade in hand: Kathleen Norris, The Cloister Walk (New York: Riverhead, 1996), 32.
10 If you’re not aligned: Scott Kedersha, quoted in FamilyLife (@FamilyLifeToday), Twitter, July 15, 2019, 9:50 a.m., https://twitter.com/FamilyLifeToday/status/1150779578799067136.
Most generational cohorts: Michael Lipka, “Millennials Increasingly Are Driving Growth of ‘Nones,’” Pew Research Center, May 12, 2015, www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/05/12/millennials-increasingly-are-driving-growth-of-nones/.
11 Divorce statistics of interfaith marriages: Naomi Schaefer Riley, ’Til Faith Do Us Part: How Interfaith Marriage Is Transforming America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 121.
35 School(s) for Conversion: 12 Marks of a New Monasticism, The Rutba House, ed. (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2005).
39 Demonstration plot for the kingdom: “Brief History,” Koinonia Farm, accessed February 13, 2020, www.koinoniafarm.org/brief-history/.
46 Advent guide: Tsh Oxenrider, “A Simple Advent Guide,” https://tshoxenreider.com/shop/advent/.
57 Moscow had only six minutes: Charles Maynes, “Moscow Sees Only 6 Minutes of Sunlight During All of December,” All Things Considered, January 18, 2018, https://www.npr.org/2018/01/18/578956832/moscow-sees-only-6-minutes-of-sunlight-during-all-of-december.
64 I offer you: Francis de Sales, St. Francis de Sales: Selected Letters, ed. and with an introduction by Elisabeth Stopp, 2nd ed. (Stella Niagara, NY: DeSales Resource Center, 2011), 152.
77 Robert Ellsberg’s book: Robert Ellsberg, Blessed Among All Women: Women Saints, Prophets, and Witnesses for Our Time (New York: Crossroad, 2007), 18.
78 story of each holy person: Ellsberg, Blessed Among All Women, 18.
79 If I ever become a Saint: Mother Teresa, Come Be My Light: The Private Writings of the “Saint of Calcutta,” ed. Brian Kolodiejchuk (New York: Image, 2009), 230.
82 De Paul wrote: Robert Ellsberg, Blessed Among All Women: Women Saints, Prophets, and Witnesses for Our Time (New York: Crossroad, 2007), 39.
83 Saint Francis de Sales once wrote: Saint Francis de Sales, Jane de Chantal, Francis de Sales, Jane de Chantal: Letters of Spiritual Direction, Classics of Western Spirituality, ed. Wendy M. Wright and Joseph F. Power, trans. Péronne Marie Thibert (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1988), 34.
in the choices they made: Ellsberg, Blessed Among All Women, 16.
90 between God’s two wills: Sister Katherine, “Discernment: What Francis de Sales Calls the ‘Two Wills of God’ Talk,” Visitation Monastery of Minneapolis, November 1, 2010, www.visitationmonasteryminneapolis.org/2010/11/living-between-the-two-wills-of-god-st-francis-de-sales-speaks-through-sister-katherine/.
94 nun instructing teenage women: Elsa Thompson Hofmeister, Extraordinary Ordinary Lives: Vocation Stories of Minnesota Visitation Sisters (Willow River, MN: James Monroe, 2009).
105 Merriam-Webster, s.v. “relinquish (v. tr.),” accessed March 31, 2020, www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/relinquish.
108 more nuns over the age of ninety: Erick Berrelleaz, Mary L. Gautier, and Mark M. Gray, “Population Trends Among Religious Institutes of Women,” Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate Special Report, Fall 2014. https://cara.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Women_Religious_Fall2014_FINAL.pdf.
112 “rightsizing” more than “downsizing”: Dan Stockman, “Religious Communities Face Changes, Plan to Retain Missions and Preserve History,” Global Sisters Report, June 2, 2016, www.globalsistersreport.org/news/trends/religious-communities-face-changes-plan-retain-missions-and-preserve-history-40136.
It’s like a secret spiral: Richard Rohr, “The Universal Pattern: Loss and Renewal,” Center for Action and Contemplation, April 24, 2017, https://cac.org/universal-pattern-loss-renewal-2017-04-24.
120 self-differentiation: Richard Niolon, “Bowenian Family Therapy,” PsychPage, accessed March 31, 2020, www.psychpage.com/learning/library/counseling/bowen.html#Z3.
121 Wash not just my feet: John 13:9.
What if Judas: Rachelle Linner, “Tonight—Holy Thursday,” Give Us This Day, 8, no. 3 (March 2018): 341.
123 To take up our cross: Francis de Sales, Every Day with Saint Francis de Sales, comp. Augustine Archenti and Arnold Pedrini, trans. W. L. Cornell, ed. Francis J. Klauder, “Sermons 2, Oeuvres 9” (New Rochelle, NY: Salesiana Publishers, 1985), 18.
129 Weather fluctuations: Saint Francis de Sales quoted in, Lewis S. Fiorelli, Inspired Common Sense: Seven Fundamental Themes of Salesian Spirituality (Stella Niagara, NY: DeSales Resource Center, 2012), 43-44.
132 not waste our energy: Saint Francis de Sales, Selected Letters trans. Elisabeth Stopp, 2nd ed. (Stella Niagara, NY: DeSales Resource Center, 2011), 61.
133 found herself married: Wendy Wright, preface to Janet K. Ruffing, Elisabeth Leseur: Selected Writings, Classics of Western Spirituality (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2005), 1.
135 approach the abyss: Felix Leseur, “In Memoriam” in Elisabeth Leseur, The Secret Diary of Elisabeth Leseur: The Woman Whose Goodness Changed Her Husband from Atheist to Priest (Manchester, NY: Sophia Institute Press, 2002), xxiii.
commitment to silence: Janet K. Ruffing, “Elizabeth Leseur: A Strangely Forgotten Modern Saint,” in Lay Sanctity, Medieval and Modern, ed. Ann W. Astell (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2000), 120.
136 arguments or discussion was futile: Ruffing, “Elizabeth Leseur,” 120.
in order to surrender: Ruffing, “Elizabeth Leseur,” 123.
142 I want you: Elsa Thompson Hofmeister, Extraordinary Ordinary Lives: Vocation Stories of Minnesota Visitation Sisters (Willow River, MN: James Monroe, 2009), 278.
144 public witness to Gospel values: Joan Chittister, Fire in These Ashes (Franklin, WI: Sheed & Ward, 1995), 100.
147 The very nature of marriage: Kathleen Norris, Acedia and Me (New York: Riverhead Books, 2008), 180.
147 What the world needs now: Joan Chittister, The Fire in These Ashes: A Spirituality of Contemporary Religious Life (Franklin, WI: Sheed and Ward, 1995), 102.
148 makes growth possible: Chittister, Fire in These Ashes, 83.
162 my friend Kendra wrote: Kendra Langdon Juskus, www.instagram.com/slowpoetklj
170 The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You’re Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are, Brené Brown (Center City, MN: Hazelden, 2010), 87.
173 The life of mortals: Psalm 103:15-16.
176 It rises and falls: Flannery O’Connor, The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O’Connor, ed. Sally Fitzgerald (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1979), 452.
188 The word obey: Kathleen Norris, Acedia and Me (New York: Riverhead Books, 2008), 183.
190 marriage “serves us best”: Wendell Berry, Standing by Words (Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint, 1983), 97.
211 intercession of saints and angels: David Lamb, “The Communion of Saints: Dead or Alive in Christ?” Evangelical Catholic Apologetics, accessed February 27, 2020, http://www.biblicalcatholic.com/apologetics/a96.htm.
dead can accompany us: Robert J. Carlson, “Praying for Those Who Have Died Is a Spiritual Work of Mercy,” Catholic News Agency, August 11, 2011, https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/column/praying-for-those-who-have-died-is-a-spiritual-work-of-mercy-1739.
226 I wear the image: This paragraph and the two that follow are lightly adapted from Stina Kielsmeier-Cook, “Evangelists of Love: Billy Graham and Francis de Sales,” Bearings Online, February 23, 2018, https://collegevilleinstitute.org/bearings/evangelists-of-love.
227 Blessed are the agnostics: I can’t find the verbatim transcript of her talk from the 2016 Festival of Faith and Writing, but this is taken from her book: Nadia Bolz-Weber, Accidental Saints: Finding God in All the Wrong People (New York: Convergent Books, 2015), 184-85.